lilac;

Tumblr gave it a label before so kogane is here to help. Anyone who wants the uncovered ver can just message me.

You were reluctantly at your neighbour’s—Choso’s—in the unit downstairs. He helped you there after your own apartment was broken into, and he had claimed to want to help you. Somewhere down the line, you foolishly drank something he prepared for you without ever seeing him make it, which eventually caused you to black out. It was only now that you understood that he deliberately had drugged you, the realisation anchoring heavily in your gut. You wanted to throw up as a new, different wave of nausea hit you.

The fear that followed was immediate, and it stole your breath away before you could even process it. Silence filled the room—briefly—before it was then broken amidst your panicked pause, the realisation that you were not alone in this awful little room dawning upon you.

You nodded towards the dark, where you noticed old, worn-down stairs leading to an exit, but also the all too familiar figure that guarded them. Choso stood there with his arms crossed, though his face was laced with concern, his gaze fixed on you like you were the most important thing in the world.

Immediately, you tried to scramble as far back away from him as you could, but your instincts worked against you, forcing you to lunge desperately forward in an attempt to escape. Choso met you halfway before stopping you, though. One hand settled around the back of your head to keep you still, pulling you to his chest, while the other secured around your back, keeping you flush against him. You gasped and cried against him in protest, but the sound was quickly swallowed up by his clothes.

“Shh, I’ve got you,” he hushed you at once, his demeanour all soft despite the situation he had you in. “Just stay still, and it’ll all be okay.”

He took a deep breath as he continued to try to calm you down, but all he did, of course, was make everything worse.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he promised. “I just… panicked… and you kept looking at me as if I had done something wrong,” he added, sounding less and less sure of himself. “I didn’t—I didn’t mean for this to go so far.”

You turned your face away from him to the side to speak, leaving a wet, damp spot on his chest.

“You—you drugged me!” you blurted out, your voice breaking. “S-sorry? Sorry doesn’t cut it if—if you dr-drugged me and then—” you gasped, your eyes darting wildly around the room, “you kidnapped me? O-oh my god.”

Choso responded with a slow exhale, though there was something self-loathing in the way that he did. When he tightened his arms around you, the gesture felt more desperate than it did controlling. He seemed to know, even know, that he might have messed up irreversibly. In his attempt to bring you closer to him, to keep you safe, he had otherwise succeeded in confirming just about every fear you had ever had of him.

“I’ll let you go,” he lied a second later, hoping that would calm you down, “but only if you cooperate with me. Okay?”

You tried to nod, but your actions were beyond reason. Your whole body trembled violently because fear had gripped you so thoroughly that you couldn’t even think right. You wanted to scream and to kick and writhe your way out of his arms, but something deeper down, maybe self-preservation, instructed you not to.

When he gambled the notion of loosening his hold by just a little bit, however, you seized the opportunity to reject his condition, shoving your palms hard against his chest, stumbling back in the process. As you landed clumsily on your behind, the air seemed to thicken as your panic rose, dragging yourself away from him on frantic, clammy hands.

Looking around again—just even trying to make sense of the place—all pointed towards being in a basement: that much was clear, but it didn’t look residential. You knew that the few clusters of townhouses that made up your apartment block didn’t contain any areas when you looked at the listing way back then, online. This was somewhere else. When did he even have the time to get you here?

Then, before another thought could enter, instinct took over again, and you dashed towards the nearest opening, blinded by fear. Choso, of course, who was much calmer than you were in this situation, intercepted you at once. His hand closed around your shoulder, with the other bracing around your middle, preventing your exit before you even reached the first step away from here.

A soft sigh left his lips, perhaps from exhaustion. He supposed that he couldn’t fully blame you, but it was starting to grate at him just how little he had control over your fear.

“Please,” he found himself begging quietly. “Just stay put for a moment?”

This time, you did manage to stop yourself from struggling, but it took more effort than you wanted to admit. He was a lot stronger than you, and it seemed as if he was barely exerting any effort at all. Even without his grip on you tightening, it felt like he could keep you right where he wanted, which sickened you even further. By the time your breathing had calmed, you felt anything but safe, still horribly aware of the deep trouble you were in.

Choso relaxed too, finding the confidence to continue speaking to you, even though you almost wished for him to leave you alone for a while, because you probably would have calmed down then.

“I didn’t mean for this to go this far, okay?” he managed after a moment, lightening the pressure around your body, though his gaze continued to stay on you with its full intensity. “Hell. I don’t even know why I’m doing this, to be honest.”

You struggled against him, and this time he allowed you to pull back, so as long as he could keep you where he could see you.

“I guess it might have started when you became a part of my life,” he added quietly.

Your words spilled out of you once more, disbelief coating every syllable: “But I don’t even know you.”

He smiled at that, even if in doing so, it never fully reached his eyes. He crouched down right in front of you, bringing you both back down to the floor, then hesitated momentarily—largely in realisation of just how frightening he must have been to you—especially since you had every right to feel scared. He abducted you, didn’t he? He took you somewhere dark and unknown. No matter how gentle or kind he acted now, he could not—nor would he—ever undo that.

Still, you seemed more keen to listen to him now, which he saw as an improvement.

“But I know you,” he reasoned, his calloused thumb brushing lightly along your cheek. “I know how it sounds, but I’ve been… watching you and… you work way too hard. It shows in your shoulders when you come back home, barely making it up the stairs,” he admitted, once again sounding unsteady, as if he knew just how crazy he was coming across as. “You stay up so late after, too, because of your studies, right? Which I know because I, uh…” he trailed off slightly, not wanting to admit that it was because he had been watching you, but the implication had already surfaced—

And you had caught it.

“N-not that it’s your fault for not closing the blinds properly,” he stammered, trying to amend the horrible thing he had just admitted. “I know I have a problem. I think it’s because I get attached so easily. I come from a big family, and I’m just so used to closeness, so being away out here all alone does things to me. I don’t like cities,” he went on, his excuses becoming more and more flimsy by the second, “faces come and go, and people are only ever briefly polite, especially in my line of work where kindness is transactional before they have to go.”

Then, he added on a whim—

“Not that I’m saying that I’m entitled to the attention of my customers,” he awkwardly laughed. “I understand that they don’t owe me anything. That’s not what I mean.”

As he spoke, a memory surfaced. You knew what he was talking about: that flower shop just down the road, barely around the corner. You noticed it sometimes when you were out in the morning on your walk to college or topping up your groceries. You may have seen him in there on occasion, but from the sidelines of your vision, he was always just a blur. You briefly once considered buying a potted plant from there, only to feel bad for the things, succumbing to getting something from a commercialised place instead, and even then, that plant died on your windowsill the following week. The only reason you ever succeeded in taking care of the landlady’s plants was that she left you thorough written instructions.

A deeper realisation settled in as you processed that fact. Perhaps you were there—at that said floristry—beneath the shop front, likely in some sort of storage room. A hidden space tucked away in the street that nobody would ever suspect.

Choso watched you glance around, seeming to understand what you might have pieced together.

Horribly enough, as well, you sort of understood where he was coming from, too, because even among familiar places, you always just seemed to exist around everyone else’s already established circle. Shoko was the only one to help you ever break out of that cycle, and that was already long after the first month had passed.

Wait. That’s it. Shoko.

Your hands flew to your pockets before your mind fully caught up on the obvious, patting desperately around for your phone.

Choso, however, understood right away, and his expression changed to something darker, but only just. “I’m sorry,” he said decisively. “I had to take your phone away.”

You stopped your search, your hands hovering around at your sides.

“Well, I mean, you would call the police, wouldn’t you?” he added.

You shook your head at that. “N-no, no, I wouldn’t,” you promised quickly. “I just wanted to call or, no, text—text my friend to let her know that I’m okay. She’s been worried about me lately.”

Choso went still for a moment as a variable was introduced into what he thought was initially a well-executed plan.

“Is that the same friend that you stayed with before?” he asked, uncertainty creeping into his voice, and quite possibly envy. “Are you both just friends? Nothing more?”

You nodded so hard that it made you feel dizzy all over again, maybe because the drugs hadn’t fully worn off yet.

“Y-yes,” you confirmed. “The campus is just a bit out of the way, so sometimes I stay over because it beats coming home too late.”

His gaze stayed on you. “Oh? But that didn’t exactly stop you from stumbling home drunk that one time,” he caught. “Though I suppose alcohol might have dulled your judgement then.”

Then, with a careful shift back, he softened the look on his face in an attempt to look reasonable again.

“But that’s okay.” he smiled warmly once more. “If you just tell me who she is, I can think of something later.”

Something about the way he said that, though, left you feeling uneasy in a way you couldn’t properly explain.

“N-no, it’s okay.” You were quick to decline his offer. “I can text her, and you can watch me do so, yeah? That should work.”

Choso, however, hesitated. To him, your friend was not his concern, but she might as well have been an obstacle that prevented you from fully accepting the fate he had forced upon you. In that instance, she might have even been his enemy, because for as long as she was in your thoughts, that faint sliver of hope remained.

“Or,” he countered, an idea suddenly forming in his mind, “I could take you out, and you can tell her yourself?” he suggested, hoping that if he had a visual on her, he could remove her later, however that could ever possibly happen. He didn’t want to hurt others; in fact, the idea made him feel uneasy, but he also didn’t want you to leave either.

That much alone was enough to catch your attention, though.

“Take me out?” you quickly repeated, hopeful at the prospect of escape.

“Yes,” Choso nodded, keeping a lot of the details out, eager to keep your attention. “Would you like that? If you tell her yourself in person, wouldn’t she believe you much better than just through words?”